Micah & the Dirty Danites

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Welcome & Announcements (Bubba)

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4 announcements:

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Potluck at 5PM, meal at 6.

Call to Worship (Psalm 1:1-3)

Prayer of Praise (Beth Klaassen)

Christ Our Hope in Life and Death

Jesus Paid It All

Prayer of Confession (Stephen Keatts), Failure to speak against sin in our culture

Assurance of Pardon (Psalm 145:17-18)

Christ Our Wisdom

Be Thou My Vision

Scripture Reading (Judges 17)

You can find it on page 256 in the black Bibles

Pastoral Prayer (Bubba)

Prayer for PBC—PBC children returning to school

Prayer for sister church—Nansemond River Baptist (Ryan Brice)

Prayer for US—Against poverty

Prayer for the world—South Africa

Pray for the sermon

SERMON

START TIMER!!!

Like millions of other Americans in the mid-2000s, Holly and I were obsessed with a television show called Lost.

Lost was groundbreaking television. It featured incredible storytelling, complex character development, and innovative narrative techniques that consistently kept you on the edge of your seat, wanting more.

Until, it’s final episode on May 23, 2010. Holly and I joined over 13.5 million Americans who watched the finale live.

And we shared the sentiment expressed by most of those Americans when we watched how the story ended: wait. . . what?!? THAT’S how it ends?!?

Perhaps some of you may get a similar feeling as we come to the ending chapters of the book of Judges.

The first 16 chapters of Judges gave us riveting stories of rescue with a host of incredible characters.

Twelve times God’s people rebelled, twelve times they were disciplined at the hands of enemy nations, and twelve times God sent a judge to rescue His people.

But now, in the final five chapters of Judges, the author's perspective changes.

No longer do we see God’s people being oppressed by a foreign oppressor.

No longer do we see God raising up a judge to rescue His people.

In these chapters we see a phrase repeated four times, that is a summary statement of life during the time of Judges.

Judges 17:6—In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

This is a time of relativism, where people did whatever they wanted.

We’re going to examine these final five chapters in two sections.

Next Sunday we’ll study chapters 19-21 and how abandoning the truth perverts morality.

Today we’ll study chapters 17-18 and how Abandoning the truth perverts worship.

That’s the Big Idea I hope to communicate today.

With God’s help I want to answer three questions about false worship:

What is the problem?

Why is it so serious?

How can we avoid it?

Let’s begin by answering our first question...

1) What is the PROBLEM?

If you were paying attention to our Scripture reading a few minutes ago, you might have an opinion on what’s going on here.

This guy Micah created some idols, so this must be another instance of God’s people worshipping false gods.

It’s actually not that simple.

The problem here is NOT worshipping a false god, but worshipping the true God wrongly.

Let me show you.

Judges 17:1—There was a man of the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Micah.

Right off the bat we are introduced to a religious family.

They’re from the tribe of Ephraim, descendants of Joseph.

And in a day when names carried incredible significance, this man is named Micah, which means “Who is like Yahweh?”

By the way, this is NOT the same Micah who wrote the book of Micah in the Old Testament.

That’s Micah the prophet, and he preached against the false worship that this Micah represents.

Judges 17:2—And he said to his mother, “The 1,100 pieces of silver that were taken from you, about which you uttered a curse, and also spoke it in my ears, behold, the silver is with me; I took it.” And his mother said, “Blessed be my son by the LORD.”

There is a LOT crammed into this verse.

Micah’s mom is not only religious, she’s also very rich.

1,100 pieces of silver was over 100 times the average annual wage in those days. [2]

Even if this was all the money this woman had, she should’ve been set for life.

One day she discovers 1,100 pieces of silver missing.

So she does what many people would’ve done in those days: she curses the person who stole it.

She must’ve said the curse loudly—or repeatedly—because eventually her son Micah hears it.

And Micah, perhaps afraid of what would happen to him if the curse came true, confesses his crime.

“Uh. . . Mom, sorry it was me. I’m the one who stole your money.”

This gives you a sense of what kind of man this Micah was, the sort of man who would rip off his own mother.

I say “man,” not “boy” because Micah is a middle-aged adult. We learn in verse 5 that at least one of Micah’s sons is an adult too.

Parents, if you’re having trouble with your adult children just know that you’re not alone. This is a problem that has been around for a long, long time.

But sadly, Micah’s mom is contributing to the problem.

Rather than rebuke her son, or report him to the authorities, or ask him to obey the Law of Moses and offer a sacrifice to atone for his sin, she says something astounding.

She reverses the curse and gives her son a blessing!!!

“What a sweet boy you are, Micah! God bless you for giving back the money you stole from me!”

Micah’s mom is enabling her son. This is cheap grace without consequences. It’s reconciliation without repentance.

Parents can learn a lot here about how not to respond to our sinning children, but that’s not the main point of this story.

This is a story about false worship.

You might have noticed that the word “LORD” in verse 2 is in all caps.

That means she’s saying “Yahweh,” the covenant name for God revealed to Moses at the burning bush.

This is a very religious woman, who isn’t afraid to talk about God.

She’s even careful to get her terminology right.

But she has taken the truth about God and mixed it with lies...

Judges 17:3–5—And he restored the 1,100 pieces of silver to his mother. And his mother said, “I dedicate the silver to the Lord from my hand for my son, to make a carved image and a metal image. Now therefore I will restore it to you.” So when he restored the money to his mother, his mother took 200 pieces of silver and gave it to the silversmith, who made it into a carved image and a metal image. And it was in the house of Micah. And the man Micah had a shrine, and he made an ephod and household gods, and ordained one of his sons, who became his priest.

If you met Micah’s mom, you would think she’s a very religious woman.

She talks a LOT about the true God, but she is worshipping Him falsely.

Her worship is false for two reasons:

First, she doesn’t give what she promised.

Like Ananias and Sapphira, she promises one amount and gives another.

Second, Micah’s mom gives the money to something the Lord hates.

The money is being used to make an image.

This was probably not an image of some false god like Chemosh or Molech. It was probably meant to be an image of Yahweh.

Just like the Israelites who made an image of a golden calf to worship Yahweh in the wilderness.

Micah’s mom is more interested in easy worship than obedient worship.

And sadly, Micah is no different...

Judges 17:7–9—Now there was a young man of Bethlehem in Judah, of the family of Judah, who was a Levite, and he sojourned there. And the man departed from the town of Bethlehem in Judah to sojourn where he could find a place. And as he journeyed, he came to the hill country of Ephraim to the house of Micah. And Micah said to him, “Where do you come from?” And he said to him, “I am a Levite of Bethlehem in Judah, and I am going to sojourn where I may find a place.”

All of a sudden we’re introduced to a new character, a nameless Levite from Bethlehem.

Now the Levites were supposed to be the caretakers of the tabernacle.

They were sort of like church staff today.

So the fact that guy is wandering around, homeless and looking for work, tells you that something isn’t quite right.

But what this Levite sees as a problem, Micah sees as an opportunity...

Judges 17:10–12—And Micah said to him, “Stay with me, and be to me a father and a priest, and I will give you ten pieces of silver a year and a suit of clothes and your living.” And the Levite went in. And the Levite was content to dwell with the man, and the young man became to him like one of his sons. And Micah ordained the Levite, and the young man became his priest, and was in the house of Micah.

Micah should be set! He’s already hired his own son as a priest!

But he knows enough of God’s law to know that priests were supposed to be from the tribe of Levi.

So he fires his own son and hires this Levite to be a priest for his own family.

Why would Micah do that?

Because, despite all his errors, Micah is NOT trying to worship a false god. He’s worshipping the true God wrongly.

Judges 17:13—Then Micah said, “Now I know that the LORD will prosper me, because I have a Levite as priest.”

Once again, Micah is using the covenant name of God. Yahweh—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Moses—will prosper me!

After all, look how official I am? I’m legit! I've got a Levite working for me now!

Tragically, this false worship spreads. It doesn’t stop in Micah’s house, but spreads to an entire tribe.

In chapter 18:1-4, we’re introduced to some men from the Tribe of Dan.

The first time we heard about Dan in the book of Judges was all the way back in chapter 1.

Judges 1:34—The Amorites pressed the people of Dan back into the hill country, for they did not allow them to come down to the plain.

Like the Israelites in the wilderness, the people of Dan have been wandering without a home.

But now, like the Israelites, they are sending spies into the land that they want to possess.

SHOW DAN MAP

The shaded portion of the map labeled “Dan,” right on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, is the territory God had promised to this tribe.

But they’ve got their eyes set on a piece of land called Laish, far north about 125 miles away.

And on their way to spy out the land, they run into this guy Micah and his priest.

Look at what they say...

Judges 18:5–6—And they said to him, “Inquire of God, please, that we may know whether the journey on which we are setting out will succeed.” And the priest said to them, “Go in peace. The journey on which you go is under the eye of the LORD.”

Once again, these are religious people.

Even though they’re about to conquer a land that wasn’t promised to them, they still want to do it in the name of God.

The Danite spies use the name “Elohim,” the name for God in Genesis 1:1.

And the Levite priests assures them: Go in peace, Yahweh will bless you.

So then these spies report back to their tribe in verse 10 and say, “Let’s go conquer Laish! God is with us!!!

Do you see the problem here? Micah, his mom, this Levite, and the Danites are NOT worshipping a false god. They’re worshipping the true God wrongly.

The problem reflected in our text isn’t like Islam, Buddhism, or Hinduism. Those are all false religions that worship false gods.

The problem here is something that claims to worship the true God but does it wrongly.

Like Catholicism, or the prosperity gospel, or churches that affirm LGBTQ.

Which leads us to our second question...

2) Why is it so SERIOUS?

Can’t we just live and let live? Why do we need to be concerned about HOW we worship? Isn’t it just enough for someone to be sincere?

It’s hard enough to deal with all the idols in my heart! Do I really need to be concerned about worshipping the right God rightly?

Yes, but not because God is petty or some sort of obsessive-compulsive perfectionist.

God cares because He loves you, and He knows what false worship will do to you!

I want to show you three consequences of false worship:

A) False worship will CORRUPT your world

False worship is like a cancer that cannot be contained. It spreads and corrupts everything it touches.

In our text, it began by corrupting Micah and his family.

And then it spread to this traveling Levite.

And then, in chapter 18, it spreads to an entire tribe.

Look at what happened to the Danites after the spies visited Micah’s house for the first time...

Judges 18:14–20—Then the five men who had gone to scout out the country of Laish said to their brothers, “Do you know that in these houses there are an ephod, household gods, a carved image, and a metal image? Now therefore consider what you will do.” And they turned aside there and came to the house of the young Levite, at the home of Micah, and asked him about his welfare. Now the 600 men of the Danites, armed with their weapons of war, stood by the entrance of the gate. And the five men who had gone to scout out the land went up and entered and took the carved image, the ephod, the household gods, and the metal image, while the priest stood by the entrance of the gate with the 600 men armed with weapons of war. And when these went into Micah’s house and took the carved image, the ephod, the household gods, and the metal image, the priest said to them, “What are you doing?” And they said to him, “Keep quiet; put your hand on your mouth and come with us and be to us a father and a priest. Is it better for you to be priest to the house of one man, or to be priest to a tribe and clan in Israel?” And the priest’s heart was glad. He took the ephod and the household gods and the carved image and went along with the people.”

What began as simply a family affair has now spread to an entire tribe with thousands and thousands of people.

In 1830, there were only 6 members of the Mormon faith. Now there are over 17 million.

Brother, sister, friend, you and I have NO IDEA what kind of impact our worship may have on the people around us—for good or for bad.

Micah wasn’t trying to spread his views on worship. His false worship spread to an entire tribe without his permission or his blessing. But it spread anyways.

What would your community look like if your worship habits spread throughout your neighborhood?

What would churches around the world look like if they started imitating PBC? Would it make them better or worse?

B) False worship will STEAL your joy

The Bible says that God is a jealous God. He is not jealous because He’s petty or needy, but because He KNOWS that only true worship can satisfy you!

Micah learns firsthand how false worship can steal your joy.

Judges 18:22–26—When [the Danites] had gone a distance from the home of Micah, the men who were in the houses near Micah’s house were called out, and they overtook the people of Dan. And they shouted to the people of Dan, who turned around and said to Micah, “What is the matter with you, that you come with such a company?” And he said, “You take my gods that I made and the priest, and go away, and what have I left? How then do you ask me, ‘What is the matter with you?’ ” And the people of Dan said to him, “Do not let your voice be heard among us, lest angry fellows fall upon you, and you lose your life with the lives of your household.” Then the people of Dan went their way. And when Micah saw that they were too strong for him, he turned and went back to his home.

I want you to particularly notice the tragic irony of verse 24.

Micah basically says, “You’ve taken everything away from me!”

And that’s the problem with false worship. False worship can never satisfy because it eliminates the possibility of a personal relationship with God.

Tim Keller puts it this way: “In a personal relationship with a real person, the other one can contradict you and upset you—then you have to wrestle through it to deeper intimacy. But when we simply ignore (either intellectually or psychologically) the parts of God we don’t like, it means we don’t have a God that can ever contradict our deepest desires or say “no” to us. We never wrestle with him. We never let him make demands on us. We can end up worshiping a much more comfortable God, but also a non-existent one.” [3]

Micah has lost everything, because the god he thought he was worshipping doesn’t really exist.

And that’s what happens to all of us when we engage in false worship. You cannot find lasting joy by worshipping a god of your own imagination.

C) False worship can DOOM your soul

Armed with their new priest, the people of Dan travel to Laish and conquer it.

Everything seems so going so smoothly for the Danites.

They’ve got a home, they’ve got their own priests, and they even set up their own place of worship!

Judges 18:30–31—And the people of Dan set up the carved image for themselves, and Jonathan the son of Gershom, son of Moses, and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land. So they set up Micah’s carved image that he made, as long as the house of God was at Shiloh.

The false worship in Dan lasts for a long, long time.

The image lasted for as long as a few hundred years. Until King Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem.

If you visit Israel today, you can still see the very spot where this false worship took place.

SHOW TEL DAN IMAGE

But the false worship lasted much longer than Micah’s image. Verse 30 says it continued “until the day of the captivity of the land.”

This could either mean the Assyrian captivity in 722 B.C. or the Babylonian captivity in 587 B.C.

Either way, this false worship lasted for for centuries.

And you know what’s interesting? There is only one of the twelve tribes not mentioned at all in the New Testament.

Even in the book of Revelation, where the tribes are listed and counted in chapter 7, one tribe is conspicuously absent.

Take a guess which one? It’s the tribe of Dan.

It seems as if the tribe of Dan never recovered from the false worship that began all the way back in the book of Judges.

There’s no promise that you will either, friend.

False worship is not to be trifled with.

It is a serious sin with serious consequences.

Which leads us to our final question...

3) How Can We AVOID it?

Here’s where I want to get really practical.

If false worship is such a serious problem, we need to know how to avoid it.

Let me suggest eight principles to avoid false worship:

A) Know your BIBLE

This one seems obvious, but sadly it often isn’t.

Remember the reason this false worship was thriving in Israel:

Judges 17:6—In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

God’s people didn’t need an earthly king to tell them what to do. They had the law handed down from Moses.

But they weren’t paying attention.

Christian: the surest way to worship the right God rightly is to know your Bible. And particularly to know what your Bible says about worship!

You’re not going to figure this all out overnight. But you will grow in your understanding here if you’re faithful to get Bible intake every single day.

B) Beware the FAMILY WORSHIP Trap

We believe in family worship, that every family should have regular time when they study God’s Word and pray together.

There’s a bunch of resources in the bookstall that can help you with this if you’re interested.

But there IS a danger in family worship if you divorce it from corporate worship.

Micah and his family took family worship to an extreme! They stopped worshipping with the community and ONLY worshipped at home.

Brothers and sisters, you NEED the local church to worship rightly. Your family is amazing, but it’s not a church.

C) Beware the SUCCESS Syndrome

The success syndrome says this: if we are successful God must be blessing us.

If we’ve got a lot of money, or the kid’s ministry is growing, or attendance is strong, than we must be doing something right.

Many of the characters in our story could’ve said the same thing.

When we first met the Levite, he was unemployed and homeless.

He meets Micah, and all of a sudden he’s got a steady job, a new wardrobe, and he’s treated like family.

And then he helps the tribe of Dan and gets a promotion! Surely God must be blessing him!

Or how about tribe of Dan? When we first see them they’re homeless too.

But then they rob a priest who promises God’s blessing and—voila! They’ve living large in Laish!

But success does not equal blessing.

When he was alive, Charles Colson often heard people talk about how much God was blessing his ministry, Prison Fellowship.

In response, he wrote this:

“As much as I am sincerely certain that God is, indeed, blessing us, I believe even more certainly that it’s a dangerous and misguided policy to measure God’s blessing by standards of visible, tangible, material ‘success.’ The inference is that when things are prospering ‘God is blessing us’ and, conversely, that when things are going poorly, or unpublicized, God’s blessing is not upon the work or it is unimportant. . . . We must continuously use the measure of our obedience to the guidelines of his Word as the real—and only—standard of our ‘success.’” [4]

PBC: the measure of our success is our faithfulness!!!!

D) Don’t focus on what you can SEE

This all started when Micah’s mom told him to make an image.

Like I said earlier, this was probably not an image of some false god like Chemosh or Molech. It was probably meant to be an image of Yahweh.

Do you know WHY God forbids worshipping with images? Because an image will always conceal some truth about God.

‌If you make an image of God as a golden calf, you highlight His power but you’ll obscure His omniscience and His mercy.

If you make an image of God on a cross you highlight His sacrifice, but you obscure His resurrection and His power over death.

Christianity is not a religion of the eyes, it’s a religion of the ears! We worship God based on what we HEAR in His Word, not based on what we can SEE with our eyes.

Don’t be too impressed by what you SEE, but by what you HEAR.

E) Beware EAR-TICKLERS

2 Timothy 4:3—For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires. [NASB]

Beware the preacher who tells you everything you want to hear!

But that’s exactly the kind of priest that the Levite was. The Danites already had land that was promised to them, they just needed to take it. But instead they wanted the lush land in Laish. So they found a preacher who told them “sure! God wants you to live your best life now! Go for it!”

If my preaching doesn’t offend you sometimes, either you’re not listening or I’m doing something wrong.

God’s Word is offensive! It challenges us and convicts us! And that’s good!

F) Resist CONVENIENT worship

Remember how convenient Sundays were during the early days of the pandemic?

Get out of bed, go downstairs, sit on the couch and turn on YouTube!!!

I’m grateful we still have a livestream to serve those who are unable to attend. We’re so grateful you have a way to hear what God is doing here while you’re unable to attend.

But a livestream is NO replacement for gathering with God’s people.

Micah and his family had a convenient setup! No need to travel 30 miles to Shiloh for worship! Just sit on the couch and listen to the home priest!

But worship isn’t supposed to be convenient. It’s supposed to stretch you in uncomfortable ways so you look more like Jesus!

One way we want to be stretched is by taking the truth we know and spreading it to the nations!

This includes sending missionaries like Luke and Emily,

Or planting a Hispanic church in Hampton Roads so people who don’t have a healthy church in their language can have one,

Or telling the gospel to our friends and neighbors so they know what God has done for them!

G) Don’t ASSUME anyone is immune

One of the reasons we get in such trouble with false worship is we assume too much.

We put too much faith in certain people, as if they couldn’t possibly ever be wrong. And then we fail to test what they say by the Scriptures!

Notice in Judges 18:30 that the identity of this Levite priest is finally given.

The text says he is the son of Gershom, son of Moses.

Even the grandson of Moses wasn’t immune to the lures of false worship!

And neither are you and I.

There’s an old saying, “God has no grandchildren.”

It means that nobody has a relationship with God because their parents do.

Everybody must come to God on their own terms.

What about you, friend?

Have you come to God through faith in Jesus? Or are you just assuming that you’re fine because your parents are religious?

Fourteen years after it’s finale, the ending of Lost is still controversial. But there’s simply no way the show’s writer could have satisfactorily resolved all the questions in that final episode.

In a lot of ways, the book of Judges has the same problem. But the difference here is that this book ISN’T the end. It’s not supposed to be.

The Bible tells us that all the stories of the Bible are pointing to the One story, about the King of Kings, the only One who perfectly did what is right in God’s eyes!

Unlike Micah, Jesus isn’t a son who cheats and steals in order to get ahead. Jesus is a Son who gladly gives His life so His people might live.

Unlike Jonathan, Jesus isn’t a priest who’s always looking for the best gig. He’s a Great High Priest who sacrifices Himself so that His people can be adopted into the family of God.

Unlike Dan, Jesus didn’t disobey the revealed will of God in order to get His own way. He prayed in the garden, sweating drops of blood, “Not my will but your’s be done.”

For some of you, that can begin today by turning from your sins and trusting in Jesus.

Others of you know the King, but you haven’t been following Him. Today is the day to turn back.

Still others, we just need to keep our eyes on Jesus. So that we don’t dishonor our King with false worship.

Prayer of Thanksgiving

Good and Gracious King

Benediction (Romans 8:38-39)